Betty Chambers Has Spoken

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Random Thoughts on Father's Day
Sunday, June 15, 2008

My father introduced me to politics.

He even wanted me to become a lawyer, but alas that was not to be. He's still around, and lives with my mother of course.

My folks are immigrants, two times. They left their island home for the United Kingdom. My mother foresaw that opportunities in Great Britain might be limited. She decided that America would be the better choice for us. She was right.

This country has always fascinated me - the good and the bad.

Many many years ago my Dad came to the USA, before he married my mother. He was in the deep south having to contend with segregation and the color line. I don't know if he knew about it before he arrived. He did speak about what a tough adjustment it was. The work alone was rough and very very hard.

Now, my two brothers live in the deep south. To say that their lives today are a world apart from what my father went through would be an understatement. Along with visiting my older brother, I go visit an old friend of mine in the deep south.

The only way things can change in America is based on the people, not the government.

The first time I voted was when my Dad took me to the polls. I was quite proud. I vote because so many others died so that I have this right. It is my voice in this representational democracy. I don't take it for granted.

I don't believe that the government can re-create a majority of stable two-parent Afro-American families. I do believe it did a lot of damage to it, resulting in the small number of these families today.

I don't believe the government is capable of efficient, capable, and positive social policy for its citizens. It is too late for that. The only thing it can do is poorly manage money and wage wars.

I sometimes fear that with its profligate spending and wasting of resources this government will collapse under its own weight. I hope it doesn't happen.

Labels: america, father's day, immigrants, politics, segregation, vote

posted by GoldenAh

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Business, Politics and the Personal - Part ii
Sunday, December 30, 2007

Continued from Business, Politics and the Personal - Part i

• Business: People are in business to make money. That's a given. I understand that.

The Good Person Myth

I don't like the fiction - pushed by the media - that a successful businessperson or famous corporate entity has higher morals or ethics than anyone, because their profits are high or they have millions and billions of dollars. The only people who love these businesses are its investors, owners, and perhaps a couple of satisfied customers.

When it comes to money, people in business are no different than the gangsters portrayed in movies. I often think that thugs might have a code of honor that business people lack. Note how they have to teach ethics in school. Study after study shows that a majority of students cheat on their exams.

No matter what paperwork they sign or the promises they make, business people lie as much, if not more than criminals. Think of the difference between drug dealers and pharmaceutical companies: one uses deadly force, while the other uses the deadly force of the government.

In case you are wondering, here's an example: required immunization shots that may actually kill you. One has the government's imprimatur, whereas the other does not.

They want to know everything, even when it's none of their business.

We've got business people who assume I'm a liar, or hiding something because there are time gaps in my resume. It can't be that I'm taking care of personal business, because in America you have no right to privacy or a life. Sometimes the fact is during those gaps, I wasn't doing jack. What would there be to write? Sought and obtained various vacuous propositions from January through December.

You are supposed to tell all. There's not enough money in the world for me to tell anyone anything that I consider irrelevant to the tasks at hand. And what is a job? A series of tasks. Nothing more, nothing less.

And yes, I am arrogant, and I still get hired.

Only we can be dishonest, we make money.

What is it that these knuckleheads will say? Well, you could have been in jail. Honestly, like you really care what I've been doing? What a crock! This is a blatant contradiction given that in this great country, businesses routinely hire folks who cannot speak English.

Businesses routinely hire people with Tuberculosis (TB), Hepatitis B, and other contagious diseases to work in their restaurants, meat processing plants, hospitals, and the like.

Businesses routinely hire people to work under the table: employees will take cash payments instead of a check. I've even interviewed some employers - not for a job - because I couldn't understand how their type of business made money. Well, if you pay people off the books you can.

But me? I might be a criminal, because I speak English, live in a house, paid off the car, went to school, finished school, etc. I still get punked for it.

Honesty is for suckers.

So, I might be lying about my college degrees if the dates don't sync up neatly with my times of employment? Wow, what gall! Do you want a blood sample, and the first born as ransom too? This is an era where corporate CEOs claim to be graduates of Ivy League colleges they never attended. I know none of them had to mail copies of their transcripts or degrees to anyone.

Know the right people and no one will hassle you about anything.

I have to account for every day, every week, every month and year. Yet, if I cross the border, just got off the plane, or have the right connections having built a grand career on lies, everything will be cool boss.

Don't forget, if you are an American employee, you are lazy, suspect, criminal and devious.

My advice: follow the crowd and be a business sociopath. No one will notice the difference. Businesses love liars and storytellers. Honesty is for suckers.

Remember that no one here respects people, because we all supposedly have an entitlement mentality. Entitlement to what? Respect as a human being? Apparently that is asking for too much.

Source:

Cheating Students

Labels: america, black woman, black women, business, Corporate America, illegal aliens, job hunting, working

posted by GoldenAh

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Give us all of your tired, hungry and poor - they work hard!
Thursday, May 17, 2007

The rallies are not a problem.... There is nothing wrong with illegal aliens demanding instant amnesty and US citizenship.

Illegal aliens have gotten away with so much already, why shouldn't they demand more? Professional journalists and columnists never question whether they should be here at all, but offer up endless sob stories about disrupted, poor, and broken families, items about all the taxes illegals (supposedly) pay, how diligently and earnestly these (desperate) people work and how much they've added to the economy, ad nauseum. A journalist has never met a law breaking poor person they've never felt sympathy for, because poverty legitamizes criminal behavior.

It's not as though illegal aliens broke any laws to get to America, right? So what, if they've falsified documents? Not a problem and certainly not a crime, right? So what, if they purchase a car and drive without a license and insurance, it's not a crime, right? So what, if they use emergency rooms for free health care? So what, if they have children right away to make it harder to be departed?

I certainly don't have any animosity towards people who "come here for a better life". Isn't that what America is all about? What's the fuss over a few laws? Laws are for tax paying US citizens to obey, for everyone else they are delicate suggestions.

The United Nations often puts out a report that a billion people are poor, starving, diseased, dying young, and living on only one dollar per day. The way I look at it - following the logic of the news media - they should all be marching in their home countries demanding US citizenship too!

If some of our congresspeople could find a way to pander to a billion poor people and obtain more power from it, they would initiate legislation pronto. I know President Bush wouldn't veto it. He actually said that, "Family values don't end at the Rio Grande."

Isn't he special?

The 10 to 20 million folks who've snuck into the country over the past decade will probably get their amnesty bill. It's not like Congress ever expects anyone to follow the laws they write. Heck, half of them don't even read the bills they sign on to. And as we all know, whatever federal laws Congress pass they are exempt from.

Oh, what a country!

Quote

Immigration rallies held across U.S. - U.S. Life - MSNBC.com

Labels: america, amnesty, illegal immigration, us citizenship

posted by GoldenAh

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